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Finally the N55 motor is getting some love! Up to this point the twin turbo N54 engine has dominated modern BMW turbo tuning and the N55 has been left in its shadow. BimmerBoost is proud to report that vendors BMS and Vargas Turbo Tech were able to work in collaboration and show a successfully tuned and installed turbocharger upgrade for the BMW N55. This is still very early on and there is more to come but N55 owners finally have a realistic turbo upgrade option to look forward to.

Notes from Terry@BMS:

I think the data speaks for itself but here are a few notes:

1) Boost with the fix is overall what I expected it would be from the start. It's able to hit ~20psi in the midrange and hold ~18psi @ 6000rpm. There is probably another psi or so of midrange boost in there with a 3.5 bar MAP sensor if we want it. It makes a little less down low which is to be expected. The gains up top are now well worth anything lost. On the street it's spooling faster now and feels great.

2) Tuning is done using JB4 ISO v5.2. We also reworked the back end flash for the E50 + meth fuel and found MBT around 9 degrees peak. The flash is loaded using a Cobb AP. Currently, they only support 2011-early 2012 models. Hopefully more models are added soon. The turbo can be used with the OEM flash but only with E85, or E85 + meth. We'll write pump gas maps for the turbo in the coming weeks for those who are using the back end flash and want to run 91 or 93.

3) With a little more boost and some other tuning tweaks 500whp might be possible with this setup. For now I'm very happy to have 120whp over stock @ 6000rpm. At 468rw this car should have enough power to run mid 11s full weight. I hope to find out this weekend.

Dude, dude, DUDE! I'm all for this. Imagine if all automotive enthusiasts used collective computing power to crack ECU's. Instead of nonsense like searching for extraterrestrial life we could make a real difference here on Earth.

I bet auto manufacturers never even thought enthusiasts might go that far. I'm in to make this happen.

Why exactly can't we do it?

The math is a $#@!. Actually it's completely mind blowing. Granted, that video is for 2048 and not 1024 but you get the idea. If we are going to crack the ECU, it is not going to be by brute force. You have to find some other vulnerability, which is probably why it's taking so long. It also means that they go back to square zero each time an idea doesn't pan out.

The math is a $#@!. Actually it's completely mind blowing. Granted, that video is for 2048 and not 1024 but you get the idea. If we are going to crack the ECU, it is not going to be by brute force. You have to find some other vulnerability, which is probably why it's taking so long. It also means that they go back to square zero each time an idea doesn't pan out.

Dude, dude, DUDE! I'm all for this. Imagine if all automotive enthusiasts used collective computing power to crack ECU's. Instead of nonsense like searching for extraterrestrial life we could make a real difference here on Earth.

I bet auto manufacturers never even thought enthusiasts might go that far. I'm in to make this happen.

Why exactly can't we do it?

Well, this would require a few things. Assuming it uses a 'programming mode', you'd have to hope that the DME doesn't lock you out after X number of attempts to enter programming mode. If so, you'd have to have an insane number of dme's hooked up to attempt to brute force this at any significant rate that brute forcing would require. Secondly, the protocol and response time over OBD/CAN would be terribly slow in comparison. This would equate into millions in DME hardware before you could brute force anything at a respectable speed.

It is physically possible. But its as easy as flicking a piece of sand through the eye of a needle from ten feet away.

EDIT: Maybe more like 100 yards.

Let me put it this way. It's possible in the sense that we cannot prove something has a truly 0% chance of happening. It's technically possible that you might get the correct key on the first iteration. What are the odds of that happening? They are less than 1 in the total number of atoms in the universe, which is 10^82 est.

Let me put it this way. It's possible in the sense that we cannot prove something has a truly 0% chance of happening. It's technically possible that you might get the correct key on the first iteration. What are the odds of that happening? They are less than 1 in the total number of atoms in the universe, which is 10^82 est.

Everyone should just donate $10 and buy Cobb some time with IBM Watson.

Or $#@! it, someone write a Cobb distributed computing program like folding@home and let's all crack it (yes, I'm aware it's not physically possible, it's a joke).

Originally Posted by inlineS54B32

I think it's not about hiding anything, just trying to prevent people from easily modifying things and then claiming warranty.

They also likely sell the key to some people (Dinan?) so they can tune? I am not certain of that, but would guess it's true.

Yes, Cobb is not dumb and has some very talented people working for it. I do not think they have attempted any brute force because it is difficult to know where to start when nothing can be read. It is a hardware and software problem combined, with the combination not known.

If Dinan produces a kit for the later N55 engine, we will know that they got some help from BMW. And I am not saying Dinan is stupid, either.

There's a difference between being able to write to some areas and actually having complete control though. It's way, way early.

Yeah, look at the Siemens MSS54 for the S54B32 engine - it took a long time for people to do big things with it. I am still curious if people like MaxPSI needed full control to do what they are doing (assuming the answer is yes).

In reference to cracking the 1024 bit encryption, I read an article were a group managed to crack a 1024 bit encription by shorting the computers power supply in a specific way and which they claimed allowed them to solve one digit of the code at a time and got the entire code in significantly less time than brute force hacking. I'm not sure if they released any papers describing in detail how they did it, but this sounds like the closest thing to getting the codes short of buying them, or actually hacking bmw servers.